The Kyoli or Cori (Chori) language is a
Plateau language spoken in
Southern Kaduna
Southern Kaduna ( ; Jju language, Jju: ''Ka̱tak Ka̱duna'' ; ; formerly Southern Zaria) is an area of the Nok Culture region inhabited by various related ethnic groups who do not identify as Hausa people, Hausa, living south of Zazzau Emirat ...
State,
Nigeria
Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
.
Overview
It is spoken in the northeast of
Nok
Nok is a village in Jaba, Nigeria, Jaba Local Government Area of Kaduna State, Nigeria. The village is an archeological site.
Archaeology
The discovery of terracotta figurines at this location caused its name to be used for the Nok culture, ...
in
Jaba Local Government Area (LGA),
Kaduna State
Kaduna (, جىِهَر كَدُنا; مدينة كدونا; , ; ) is a States of Nigeria, state in the northwest geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The state capital is its namesake, the city of Kaduna (city), Kaduna, which was the List of Nigerian ...
. The speakers prefer to spell the name of their language as Kyoli, which is pronounced
jolior
�joli The ethnic group is referred to as Kwoli.
There are about 7,000-8,000 Kyoli speakers living in the two village clusters of Hal-Kyoli and Bobang. Bobang is the cultural center of the Kyoli-speaking area. Bobang village cluster consists of the five hamlets of Bobang, Fadek, Akoli, Hagong, and Nyamten. Hal-Kyoli village is situated by itself. All of the Kwoli villages surround the foot of Egu-Kyoli Hill, which rises more than 240 meters above the villages.
[Decker, Ken, John Muniru, Julius Dabet, Benard Abraham and Jonah Innocent. 2020. ]
A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [cry
/nowiki> Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria">ry">A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [cry
/nowiki> Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria'. SIL Electronic Survey Reports.
Tone
Cori is known for having six distinct levels of tone (linguistics)">tone
Tone may refer to:
Visual arts and color-related
* Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory
* Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color
* Toning (coin), color change in coins
* ...
, too many to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which allows five. However, there are only three underlying tones: 1 (), 4 (), and 6 (), which are all that need to be written for literacy. Most cases of Tone 2 () are a result of tone sandhi, with 4 becoming 2 before 1. Tones 3 () and 5 () can be analysed as
s, with underlying realised as and realised as .
In order to transcribe the surface tones without numerals (which are ambiguous), an extra diacritic is needed, as is common for four-level languages in Central America:
:1 ()
:2 ()
:3 ()
:4 ()
:5 ()
:6 ()
/nowiki> Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria">ry">A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori)